And there is a 150 years worth of compiled data and evidence supporting evolution by genetic mutation and natural selection, including sexual selection and genetic drift.

There’s also near 2000 years of biblical scholarship and historical data affirming the existence and personal details of a religious/cult leader named Jesus Christ in antiquity. And yet we’re still having this conversation. Although, from my perspective, its a lot easier to affirm the historicity of Christ than evolution…but that horse has been beaten to death in previous threads

“If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.” -Epictetus

There is plenty of evidence that the supernatural birth, death, and miracles attributed to a superman called Jesus were borrowed from other gods and supermen - Egyptian, Greek, Roman etc.

No society has developed factual information until today? It’s depressing that you give the first to correctly use math, time, physics and construction absolutely no credit for developing a method of understand birth, death and miracles.

Simply because they don’t understand an event, doesn’t mean they didn’t witness it. It also doesn’t mean they are using a rhetoric device to describe something that is in no way related.

Our ancestors are no more or less human than we are, and they are no more or less intelligent than we are. Even when humans do evolve, we haven’t evolved much in the last 6000 years. The things we have changed for the better (industry) have created problems they never delt with (pollution). Problems we never forsaw and have no way of dealing with today.

I have a 1300 text book called “Biology” than explains evolution quite clearly actually, but thanks for the offer. But there is still no evidence for human evolution. We have a lot of bones and a lot of guess work.

Eitherway, I agree with clay. When Jesus died, they wrote about his life. No one has come up with the idea of Evolution since the dawn of man until Darwin. Everything just platues, than changes when no one is looking.

For some reason, 150 of research by the same human mind is more reliable than 10,000 years of religion done by the same human brain. I’m sure science would benefit more from the skeptics than it will the believers, as it always has.

‘I have a 1300 text book called “Biology” than explains evolution quite clearly actually, but thanks for the offer. But there is still no evidence for human evolution. We have a lot of bones and a lot of guess work.’

Then you haven’t read it, or know how to read. I could give a much simpler one at about 250 pages that could teach about all that you need to know.

Ever heard of DNA?

No evidence for human evolution eh? I think you are confusing ‘evidence’ with ‘proof’ but anyway, read this for starters-

But there is no evidence for human evolution, there is no missing link. You can tell me everything I already know from 1000 different websites, but unless you go digging in the dirt, you will not convience me.

The rest is educated guess work. Yeah, it makes perfect sense and I answer the test to get the mark, but there are numerous flaws and loops holes. Humans kill their enemies and competators, we have a large part in how we evolved. It’s not “random” or “natural” because we can creat an artificial environment and artifical selection. Humans can single handedly wipe out entire species of animals, and we do it quite often.

I can’t look at evolution and forget how much influence we’ve had on the way things will change, and the way things would have been without us.

How about from outside the bible? Multiple sources? Greco-Roman historical accounts?

You equate 150 years of scientific empirical data to 2,000 years of myths, fairly tales, metaphorical stories and with no outside sources?

Clay, you will never really understand this argument will you?

Read Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman. You may begin to understand the bible after doing so.

Well firstly, there is very little reason to throw out the biblical texts as reliable sources. But I’m sure you’re familiar with the common sources outside the NT from Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and others. Of course these passages are much disputed concerning authenticity, but they do exist and many scholars say that some of them are reliable references.

What is there not to understand? Mythicists say that Jesus never existed. However, evidence demands an explanation for their hypothesis. Bart Ehrman is not at all positing that Jesus never existed. He is primarily attacking the claim that the Bible is inerrant and “inspired” by God. Not to mention the fact that his criticisms are well-known to the bible scholar community and have been for centuries. Ehrman conspicuously uses scare tactics to frighten lay people, obviously unable to filter through the giant amounts of bible text criticism, into questioning their Christian faith. This is made more obvious by his personal testimony (often included in his books) and his knack for creating scandalous titles for his works (i.e. “Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)”...as if he’s unearthing some kind of brand new biblical text discovery that will shatter Christianity and show all pastors to be frauds trying to trick their congregations). Please…

What has helped me to understand the Bible better is to actually listen to and study brilliant scholars who have done the hard work of mastering Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, developed skills in hermeneutics and solid exegesis, and not thrown their hands up every time they see passages that don’t match up perfectly in their minds.

“If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.” -Epictetus

That’s funny! The quote is talking about other gods in the earth and “the water under the earth” which is the Babylonian cosmology of a water universe (which is what the bible says. So that really just shows that the bible is wrong, LOL!

That’s just your intepretation. What’s the earth beneth heaven? Isn’t the heavens space? Why would water and heaven refer to the same thing?

With the Babylonians, the Hebrews believed that in the beginning, before earth and heaven had been separated (“created,” ), there were primeval ocean (“tehom,” always without the article) and darkness (). From this the “word of God” (compare such passages as, God “roars” [], Ps. xviii. 16; civ. 7) called forth light. He divided the waters: the upper waters he shut up in heaven, and on the lower He established the earth. In older descriptions the combat against the tehom is related with more details. Tehom (also Rahab) has helpers, the and the Leviathan, Behemot, the “Na?ash Baria?.” The following is the order of Creation as given in Gen. 1.: (1) the heaven; (2) the earth; (3) the plants; (4) the celestial bodies; (5) the animals; (6) man. The Hebrews regarded the earth as a plain or a hill figured like a hemisphere, swimming on water. Over this is arched the solid vault of heaven. To this vault are fastened the lights, the stars. So slight is this elevation that birds may rise to it and fly along its expanse.

Why is there Something instead of Nothing: No reason or ever knowable reason.

Bad Conduct, you are completely lost about evolutionary theory. If you don’t want to study the evidence and understand the scientific methodology, that is your perogative, but it is also your ignorance and loss. Why don’t you study the sub ject before you reject it? Just one more for you to try and think about.

Clay, there is no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus outside of the bible and we all know how biased the bible is, with all of it’s contradictions, mistakes, interpolations, and variations. ny reasonable person should easily be able to ascertain that this is no divinely inspired book.

Why did none of these historians from various cultures write about the miraculous life of Jesus?

‘I still don’t believe in human evolution, no matter where animals came from.

And I still think most of the fossiles on record are inaccurate from age.’

Uh, humans are animals. We have the same DNA as all other animals, uh and plants.

Of course you don’t believe the age of fossils. True believers never do. Because you refuse to try and understand radiometric dating. Need a link for that? I have one written by a christian. People like you choose superstition and magic over science. You have the mind virus working overtime.

You are myopic and stubborn, two very bad hman traits that will guarantee to keep you ignorant as long as you ahere to them. You are a prisoner and don’t even realize it.

What is the mythicist argument against the “Criterion of Dissimilarity?”

For those unfamiliar to it, here is Bart Ehrman in Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them) describing the criterion and giving examples:

“How might we account for traditions of Jesus that clearly do not fit with a “Christian” agenda, that is, that do not promote the views and persectives of the people telling the stories? Traditions like that would not have been made up by the Christian storytellers, and so they are quite likely to be historically accurate. This is sometimes, confusingly, called the “criterion of dissmiliarity.” Any tradition of Jesus that is dissimilar to what the early Christians would have likely wanted to say about him is more likely authentic. Take the two previous examples. You can see why Christians might want to say that Jesus came from Bethlehem: that was where the son of David was to come from (Micah 5:2). But who would make up a story that the Savior came from Nazareth, a little one-horse town that no one had ever heard of? This tradition does not advance any Christian agenda. Somewhat ironically, then, it is probably historically accurate. Or take John the Baptist. In Mark, our earliest account, John baptizes Jesus. Would Christians have made this up? Remember, in the early Christian tradition it was believed that the person who was spiritually superior baptized the one who was spiritually inferior. Would a Christian make up the idea that Jesus was baptized by, and therefore inferior to, someone else? Moreover, John was baptizing “for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4). Would someone want to claim that Jesus needed to be forgiven for his sins? It seems unlikely. Conclusion? Jesus probably really did associate with John the Baptist at the beginning of his ministry, and probably was baptized by him.